White House Censorship? NPR Trying to Keep its Reporter Off of Fox News

Mara Liasson is the national political correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) and also regularly appears on Fox News Channel’s Special Report and Fox News Sunday. It is incredible how far the Obama administration may have taken its “war” on Fox news.

According to Politico, NPR, which is partially funded by the US Government, tried to strong-arm Liasson off of Fox News.

Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.

According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.

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At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.

Maybe the for reason for the request was to prop up the White House’s “war” against Fox News which to use a liberal term, became a quagmire.

One source said the White House’s criticism of Fox was raised during the discussions with Liasson. However, an NPR spokeswoman told POLITICO that the Obama administration’s attempts to discourage other news outlets from treating Fox as a peer had no impact on any internal discussions at NPR.

What would they expect the NPR’s spokesman to say, do they really want to upset one of their sources of income?

Liasson defended her work for Fox by saying that she appears on two of the network’s news programs, not on commentary programs with conservative hosts, the source said. She has also told colleagues that she’s under contract to Fox, so it would be difficult for her to sever her ties with the network, which she has appeared on for more than a decade.

…..NPR spokeswoman Dana Rehm declined to discuss Liasson and her work on Fox. “It isn’t our practice to comment about internal conversations or about personnel matters, and we’re not going to be changing that policy,” she said. “As part of our ongoing work we have internal conversations about talent appearances all the time that are part of our regular editorial evaluation.”

Rehm added, “There’s no relationship between the White House’s criticism of Fox and any discussions about Fox that we’re having.”

Nah..It was just a coincidence that one of your biggest sources of funding decided to declare war on Fox News.

A Fox spokesperson declined to comment on specific questions about Liasson. However, the spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said in an email: “With the ratings we have, NPR should be paying us to even be mentioned on our air.”

At one point during the White House attacks on Fox they tried to convince other news organizations to stay away from the News Network. White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod called on other news outlets to reconsider their approach to Fox. “They are not really a news organization,” Axelrod said in an Oct. 18 interview on ABC. “It’s really not news, it’s pushing a point of view; and the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way.”

Jacob Weisberg the editor of Slate, was a tool for the Axelrod’s propaganda against Fox, and even targeted Liasson’s work.

“By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations,” Weisberg wrote in an Oct. 17 Newsweek column, “Why Fox News Is Un-American.” “Respectable journalists — I’m talking to you, Mara Liasson — should stop appearing on its programs.”

…In February, NPR asked that journalist Juan Williams, who is a political analyst for the radio network, no longer identify himself as such when appearing on Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor.” The request followed a “Factor” appearance in January in which Williams said of first lady Michelle Obama, “She’s got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going.”

On one hand they say Fox is biased, on the other they don’t want their people appearing on Fox because they tend to offer a counterweight to the conservative positions on the Network. Does that mean they are trying to make Fox news MORE biased?

…One complaint from NPR executives is that this very perception that Liasson and Williams serve as ideological counterweights reinforces feelings among some members of the public that NPR tilts to the left. “NPR has its own issues in trying to convince people that, ‘Look, we’re down the middle,’” the source said. “This is a public and institutional problem that has nothing to do with Mara. Obviously, you can’t give Mara a hard time for what’s coming out of her mouth. … She’s very careful. She isn’t trashing anybody.”

No she Isn’t, but the White House is. Whether the pressure on Liasson is a direct result of White House arm twisting, or just a reaction to the WH war on Fox is not really important, either way, what happened was an example of President Obama and/or his team trying to censor the news and turn them into what many of them already are, propaganda tools for the Obama administration.

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